The electorate of Adelaide has existed without fundamental change since South Australia was first divided into electorates in 1903, currently stretching from the city centre to the Labor strongholds of Prospect, Enfield and Brompton to the north and an electorally mixed bag of areas to the east and south. There are sources of Liberal strength in Walkerville to the north-east of the city, Toorak Gardens to the east and Malvern to the south. Labor first won Adelaide in 1908, and it was usually held by them from then until 1988. It was lost in that year at a by-election caused by the resignation of Chris Hurford, falling to Liberal candidate Mike Pratt with an 8.4% swing. Labor recovered the seat at the 1990 election, but an unfavourable redistribution together with a swing fuelled by hostility to the state government delivered it to Liberal candidate Trish Worth in 1993. Worth’s margin never rose above 3.5% in her 11 years as member, and she survived by just 343 votes in 2001. Labor finally toppled her in 2004 when inner-city seats across the land bucked the national shift to the Coalition, a decisive 1.9% swing delivering Adelaide to Kate Ellis. In keeping with statewide trends, the seat moved solidly to Labor in 2007 (by 7.2%), recorded little change in 2010 (a 0.8% Liberal swing), and swung to the Liberals in 2013 (reducing the margin from 7.5% to 3.6%).

Kate Ellis is associated with the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association and its attendant “Catholic Right” faction, and is close to its powerful state figurehead, outgoing Senator Don Farrell. After serving her apprenticeship as an adviser to state Industry Minister Rory McEwen and Treasurer Kevin Foley, Ellis won preselection for Adelaide at the age of 27 in 2004, following the late withdrawal of Tim Stanley, an industrial lawyer and later Supreme Court justice. Her path was smoothed by a three-way factional deal that secured Hindmarsh for Steve Georganas of the “soft Left” and Makin for Dana Wortley of the “hard Left” (who nevertheless lost the preselection to Tony Zappia, but was compensated with a Senate seat).

Ellis was promoted to the outer ministry at the age of 30 following the 2007 election victory, beating Paul Keating’s record as Labor’s youngest ever minister. Following the 2010 election she was reassigned from her portfolios of youth and sport to employment participation, childcare and the status of women, exchanging the latter for early childhood and youth when Kevin Rudd resumed the leadership in June 2013. In common with the rest of her faction, Ellis was a strong supporter of Julia Gillard’s leadership, making headlines shortly before Rudd’s February 2012 challenge by claiming Rudd had asked her and other SDA figures how they could reconcile their “conservative brand of Catholicism” with “a childless, atheist ex-communist as Labor leader”. Following the 2013 election defeat she received a substantial promotion to shadow cabinet in the education portfolio.

Interesting “Air Crash Investigation” on last night about a Greek “ghost plane” plane that crashed in the mid “noughties” . Could have some relevance to the present. Hence their re-run. The cabin pressurization switch had been set to “Off” during a check by engineers. Really sad about a cabin crew member who survived by using the oxy bottles on board . He got through the locked cockpit door just before the fuel to run out and the plane crash killing everyone. Apparently the chief steward was the only member of cabin staff allowed to know the emergency over-ride code to unlock the cockpit.Fighter jets sent to look saw him enter the cockpit. Voice recorder got him calling mayday on the radio but it was set to a still set to Cyprus frequencies so no one heard his call.

1) As the plane climbs the passengers oxygen masks drop. They have 12 minutes of oxygen
2) BUT the oxygen masks in the cockpit are not set to drop automatically and so the pilots do not notice.

Within 13 minutes, as the plane climbed, the air pressure slowly dropped. The effects of hypoxia (oxygen starvation) are insidious. The pilots' judgment became impaired without them realising it. Their radio calls to the ground made clear that they had misunderstood the true nature of the warning horn that was blaring on the flight deck.
There were only minutes to go before both pilots slipped into unconsciousness.

Averages are a rather simplistic way to measure economic performance. Obviously, you clutch to them in this instance because you are desperte to prove your point.

However,in horse racing favourites win 30% of the time, second favourites about 18% of the time and third favourites around 10% of the time. In your simple world betting these three horses in a race would lead you to a world of riches. The problem is that the odds don’t always reflect the true chances of the horses participating. There are false favourites, market manipulation, speculation and the bookies margin and of course taxes that would affect the pure outcome or odds.

Of course there is the ubiquious law of averages which says simply averages tell you about the past. They do not tell you what will haappen in Race 5.

It’s also a guaranteed way to lose all your money if you follow averages.

The important thing is to consider external factors such as growth of our competitors and trading partners over the same period.

For example there is no doubt that Howard’s prosperity years were at a time of more benign world conditions. Realy he and Costello were down hill skiers for most of their term of office. Whereas, Labors performance after the GFC was far more superior than nearly every trading country in the world.

So, my point is that you need to look beyond simple averages if you really want to measure the performace of a Government and an economy.

I have always found it deliciously ironic that Andrew Bolt was a Labor staffer in the 80′s. Was he bad then or did he go bad subsequently ?

Unclear. I suspect the culture of the ALP aggravated whatever latent misanthropy and cynicism lurked within. Of course, the culture of the ALP is also a maladaptive response to boss class rule, of which Murdoch, Bolt’s employer, is and was at the time, a part. In those days, Murdoch and the ALP were much friendlier, as the ALP was then assisting Murdoch to get control of the instruments with which it would knock off the ALP when its usefulness in office fell below that of the LNP.

So to return to the original point, there’s no irony in Bolt being attracted to the Murdoch-friendly Hawke-Keating ALP, just as there was no irony in Costello or Nelson or Abbott being attracted to them either. It’s not surprising that Obeid and Sinodinos can have common interests either. Prospective power over others has as alluring an aroma to spivs, careerists and narcissists as dung has to flies.

If only Jay had changed his first name to Jai he wouldn’t be stuck with minority government with one silly old coot independent and five councils pontificating on what the sa govt should or shouldn’t do with their limited funds.

Or the first “Oil Shock” or the 1987 crash or the early 1990′s global interest rate spike or any other global down turn…………when Labor is in power. Of course the Asian Financial Crisis was only prevented from “rooning us all” by brilliant Liberal stewardship. Even if as people like Mega George pointed out it was more the “Labor” floating $ that protected us.

I decided to examine the data on economic indicators.
I found an objective source (The Australian Parliamentary Library)
I used the entire dataset.
I used all the common economic indicators (an a priori decision, I did not do the analysis and then decide what to present, I decided what I wanted to examine, and examined exactly those measures).
I presented the entire data, without editing or adjusting any data.

It gave succour to those who say the royal commissions into corrupt unions and pink batts are politically motivated and hypocritical

This was posted from some murdoch rag on the last thread, but I’m curious, surely everyone knows the two RC’s are politically motivated? The terms of reference alone would tell you that neither of them is really interested in anything but political narrative.

About this blog

William Bowe is a doctoral candidate with the University of Western Australia’s Discipline of Political Science and International Relations. He has been running the electoral studies blog The Poll Bludger since January 2004, independently until September 2008 and thereafter with Crikey.